Where does Eastern Europe start and Western Europe end? The Iron Curtain no longer exists, but its legacy does. Eastern Europe has an identity and a culture very different from the rest of Europe. Attempting to escape from a tortured past, but forever being influenced by it. This blog deals with and discovers a region stuck in limbo between East and West.

Tag Archives: Episcopia Bihor Train Station

A journey to Transylvania sounds mysterious, adventurous and a bit scary. This has much to do with the Dracula effect. One imagines being set upon by superstitious villagers and ominous aristocrats living in drafty manor houses. At every rail siding there is a false expectation that passengers will be greeted by howling wolves leaping out of some dark, dingy forest. At least that was what happened to Jonathan Harker. My experience was quite different. After all I was chasing ghosts courtesy of Miklos Banffy, not a vampire from Bram Stoker’s imagination.

My journey started far away from Transylvania in the heart of Budapest, the city in which Banffy died in 1950, far away from his beloved castle which was now in ruin. I found myself in the half light of dawn boarding a train at Keleti (Eastern) station. The greatest danger to me did not come from suspicious peasants, but that I might board the wrong train, since I was still half asleep. I did not have any problem finding the train, boarding it with time to spare. The train was uncrowded, spacious and comfortable. I settled in for what I thought was going to be a relaxing eight hour trip to Cluj. I could not have been more wrong.

Train preparing to leave Keleti (Eastern) station in Budapest

Border Crossing – An Outsider On Board
There was ongoing work on the railroad line close to the Hungary-Romania border. We would have to get off the train in eastern Hungary at the town of Puspokladany, then cross the border by bus into Romania, before boarding another train at Bors. I would have to purchase another train ticket once I got to Romania. The bus ride went from an interruption to an irritation to a major annoyance. We first traveled along a series of bumpy secondary roads. After being jolted back and forth for almost an hour it was a relief to arrive at the border crossing into Romania. For over half of Banffy’s life there was no border crossing here, this area had been part of Greater Hungary. World War I had changed the situation and from a traveler’s standpoint not for the better. Even though Romania and Hungary were both members of the European Union (EU), a hard border crossing still existed. It was here that the adventure began for me.

It turned out that I was the only one onboard who was not a citizen of an EU nation. While everyone’s passport or identification card was returned to them within a matter of minutes, I was left waiting. After a while the silence of the bus was broken by idle chatter that became increasingly agitated. One man on the bus looked in my direction and said “it’s the American.” He was inferring that I was the reason for the delay. I sank lower in my seat as the wait continued. Never has an extra twenty minutes seemed so long. The passengers were restless for a reason, if we did not get through passport control in time, we would miss the train from Bors to Cluj. No one wanted to wait in a dreary village station for another train.

Border crossing at Bors Romania

Desperate Pleas – The Ticket To Cluj
Finally a border guard showed up and handed my passport back to the bus driver who then gave it to me. I felt a sense of relief, while several of my fellow passengers let out sighs of exasperation. We were free to go, but the question was whether we could still make the train on time. When we arrived at the Episcopia Bihor station I ran inside to find a ramshackle interior, which turned out to be a nightmare of dreary carelessness. The waiting room/ticketing area looked dirty and felt even dirtier. It gave the unwelcoming impression of hell with a roof on it. To my surprise the attendant informed me that she did not take credit cards. Nor would she accept Hungarian forints. Desperately I tried to shove some dollars at her. Perhaps a bribe might work. She would have none of this. I had to pay with Romanian lei. My desperate pleas for help elicited a half intelligible response that directed me to a nearby establishment.

I ran out of the station to a bar/restaurant. The man behind the counter offered to change lei for dollars. I pulled out a wad of twenty dollar bills and received nearly everything that was in the register. When he tried to hand me a few dollars back, I signaled for him to keep it. I ran back to the station where the train had already arrived. With my heart pounding, I rushed back to the ticket window where the attendant dutifully sold me a ticket to Cluj. I burst out the station doors, climbed aboard the train and found a car half filled with passengers from my bus ride. Several of them smiled kindly at me, a reversal from half an hour earlier. Soon we were on our way.

Episcopia Bihor Train Station

The World Turned Dizzy – Change For The Worse

Miklos Banffy made this same journey by train many times during his life while traveling between Bontida and Budapest. He carried out a large part of his professional life in the Hungarian capital. At the age of 28 he was elected to the Hungarian Parliament. After World War I he was Hungary’s Foreign Minister for a couple of years. He also served as the Director of the Hungarian State Theaters for five years. As the train rolled eastward out of Bors toward the city of Oradea (Nagyvarad in Hungarian) I wondered what Banffy had seen in his time along this same stretch of railway. I imagined that it was highly pastoral, with peasants toiling in the lush, pancake flat fields.

The current scene could not have been more different. The train passed by a wretched industrial landscape. An ugly, towering factory that looked like a nightmare conjured up by the Romanian dictator Ceaucescu scarred the skyline. The ground was pockmarked with the residue of heavy industry. The sight was ghastly in the extreme, quite a welcome for newcomers from the west. I was not going to find anything of Miklos Banffy in this landscape. Then again he had written about a fading way of life that was on the cusp of major change. And the change had come, transforming everything in its path.